West Virginia argus. [volume] (Kingwood, W. Va.) 1877-1946, 1887-11-24
GREAT WRITER'S PAST AND PRES.
ENT.
by s. W. Foss.

Mr.. Howells in the last number OF
the Editors Study" in HdTpeT'S, with
more than his usual literary boldnese
makes the following statement:
At least three-tiths of the literature
called classic, in all languages, no more
lives than the poems and stories that
perish monthly in our magazines. 1t
Is all printed and reprinted generation
after generation, century after century;
but 1t Is not alive; it is dead as the
people who wrote it and read it, and TO
whom it meant something, perhaps
with whom it was fashion, a caprice.
a passing taste. A superstitious piety
preserves it, and pretends that it has
aesthetic qualities which can delight or
edify; but nobody really enjoys it, ex-
cept as reflection OF the past moods
and humors of the race, or q revelation
OF the authors character; otherwise it
is trash, and often very filthy trash,
which the present trash at least is not"
There is an honest boldness about
these words, and writer with less lit
erary hardihood than Mr.. Howells
would hesitate to utter them. l. terary
cant and humbug is so universal that
few words of manly truth from such an
accepted authority as Mr.. Howells are
especially gratifying. The uureasoning
and superstitious reverence which we
accord to the great writer's of antiquity
blinds us to the fact that they are great
only In parts, and that every authors
genius, however great it may have
been, was only intermittent. Even
Shakespeare, tho greatest genius of all
time, suffered many lapses of inspira-
ton; and even his incompatible pro-
ductions are disfgured with long dead
levels OF commonplace, forced wit and
unworthy trivialitles. Shakespeare, like
all great writer's, has been fulsomely
eulogiZed by millions who never read
him and by thousands who d. not
know the names of his plays. Though
he is the greatest writer who ever lived
he has left behind him much that 10
poor and little that is worthless
If this can be said of Shakespeare
and what sincere admirer of this SUI
preme son of genius in his own honest
inner consciousness will not say it?-
If this can be said of Shakespeare, how
much more can it be said of other
great authors whose works have taken
their places among the classics of the
world. Millions Paradise Lost" is a
great poem; but there are many long
passages i'll it, particularly in the clos
ing books, that give but little evidence
of genius, and bear unmistakable indi-
cations of the pumping process. Few
dispute the genius of Wordsworth and
yet few can read his long poems with
out yawning. The great Goethe is
sometimes dull by the hour, and long
ago it was said that Homer sometimes
mods. Dante is heavy and prosy in
Of /, 10 4 Il =,
even Virgil, who, perhaps, wrote with
as much care Though far from being
the greatest genius) of any of the
classic authors of the world, is vet a
little tedious in places.
But there is always a tendency to
overestimate the old and the classic.
The temptation to hypocrisy in literary
matters is always strong, and men are
sometimes literary as they are some
times religious, in order to be in the
fashion. 1T is easier to sem than to
be, and oftentimos less difficult to praise
an author than to read him.
The real truth probably is that the
literature of to-day is being as consci-
entously and carefully written as ever
before. There arc giants in the earth
in the literary world. even in these
degenerate days. Mr.. Howells re-
CARDS Tolstoj, living Russian au-
thor, as incomparably the greatest
novelist who ever lived; and there has
probably never been 50 true painter
of actual life-men and women as they
really eXIst-as Mr.. Howells himself.
And le wing out Shakespeare and Mil
ton, where can we find in the whole
range of English literature more
genuine poet than Tennyson; and in
the whole range of the history of let
tiers where can be discovered more
striking and original figure than Walt
Whitman. We are living in an ago
that has been made epochal by the
transcendent genius of it's philosophi-
cal and scientific writer's. Even Francis
Pacon and Isaac Newton and Coper-
nicus surely do not outrauk Herbert
Spencer and Charles Darwin in the
far-reaching and revolutionary charac-
ter OF their researches.
Great men and great writer's did not
belong exclusively to the past, and
there arc doubtless as many living to-
day as at any other previous epoch OF
She worlds history. - Yankee BLADE.
A. n a III N